Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination

Thompson, Keith

This book originated in Thompson’s 40 years of observation of "a persistent body of remarkable stories (or in UFO jargon, ‘sighting reports’)" that have "given rise to provocative mythic horizons and imaginal realms" (p. xi). He explores "the ways in which these symbolic worlds are real, vital, and filled with a significance whether or not any particular UFO was the planet Venus or a Venusian starship" (p. xi). Thompson considers the acronym UFO as "an idea at work in the world soul," which "has shaped human belief and imagination in complicated ways. A robust contemporary prodigy has emerged in our midst, enticing us with the vivid ambivalence of its images, systematically resisting definitive explanation, fostering rancorous debate, comprising a provocative enigma of global proportions. This is a chronicle of the wanderings of that prodigy" (p. xii).